achillesheel
♡ 44 ( +1 | -1 ) Pronouncing the Masters' NamesI am a lawyer. One routine difficulty for us is pronouncing the oddest names that happen to appear in cases that we argue about. With so many foreign (to an American) names in chess, I am curious how to pronounce some of them (and other chess terms as well). Examples:
Is it KAS-par-ov or kas-PAR-ov?
Is it NIM-zo-vich or NIM-zo-wich?
Is it pol-GAR or POL-gr?
Is it fee-un-CHETTO or fee-un-SHETTO or fee-un-KETO or something in-between?
I'm sure there are many others I haven't thought of here. But these occur to me.
chessnovice
♡ 21 ( +1 | -1 ) ...The tutorials in Chessmaster 9000 pronounce it fee-un-CHETTO, to my knowledge. Of course, it is an Italian word (for on the flank), and since I don't know a lick of Italian I can't say for sure. I figure the program wouldn't mess that up, though.
achillesheel
♡ 22 ( +1 | -1 ) Cool Link HonoluluAlekhine was a surprise to me too (al-uh-KEEN in my own little mind all this time).
And fmgaijin, I guess your post also would resolve my long-standing question whether it is Vladmir nuh-BOK-ov or NA-buh-kov (like the old Police song).
finduriel
♡ 18 ( +1 | -1 ) alekhineI actually think that you pronounce Alekhine with a "ch" sound like in Scots "loch" instead of a "k" sound. Oh, and "Zwischenzug" is wrong. It should be TSWEE-shen-tsoog.
Yes, I'm a prof of English and Philosophy in another incarnation and have written on Nabokov, and most of the lit folks stress the middle syllable . . .
atrifix
♡ 20 ( +1 | -1 ) Alekhineis an Anglicized Aljechin, so really it should be pronounced al-yuh-KINE, as best I can transcribe it. The "y" sound in Aljechin is really part of the vowel, and nonnative speakers might miss it even if they heard it.